Evaluation 2 - Technologies

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?





Multiple technologies were used throughout each stage of our production, allowing us to successfully complete all of the tasks set. In this evaluation, I will be evaluating the use of different technologies at each stage in our production.


Pre-Production and Research:

In the planning and research stages we used softwares, and websites to become familiar with conventions and various other things that we needed to be aware of. Most of our research was conducted on websites such as; Vimeo, IMDb, and Youtube. These websites allowed us to watch trailers for films of the same genre, with similar conventions to ours. After watching the trailers on this websites we were then able to analyse them to single out specific conventions in order to adhere to them in our production. These technologies were successful in helping us gain this knowledge, and complete effective research. The technologies mentioned above were also used throughout our AS production.

Last year we used word to type up a script, this was amateur and basic, displaying a lack of creativity and professionalism. This year we used a software named 'Celtx' to create our script, which is a pre-production scrip-writing software, that enabled us to create a professional script, easily followed by the cast and crew. Below is an image of a standard exemplary script created on Celtx. 

We used a software called 'Scribd' to upload and embed word documents to our blog, this was especially useful when uploading our script to blogger. 'Scribd' allows our script, and numerous other word documents to keep their format. Similarly we used 'Slideshare' to upload power points onto our blogs in their original format.

Microsoft Word was used consistently throughout. Word adds to the professionalism, structure, and formalism of the tasks we used it for. For example word was used to create permission letters which were distributed to the cast members, these were a formal document which required a professional look.  

IMDb (Internet Movie Database) is a dominant source of information regarding movies, TV, celebrities, biographies etc. It is a trusted, popular website with a huge amount of data, including information for over 2 million films. This made it a perfect website to conduct my research on. My secondary research into target audience was carried out using this website. IMDb has user ratings for each film, which gave me an accurate insight into the main target audiences for each individual film. 

We used 'DaFont' to search for a suitable font for our production. We specifically searched for horror fonts as this is the genre of our production. This website gave us a massive variation of different fonts to choose from.

Throughout the majority of the stages I used Prezi and SlideShare. Prezi is a fun, creative online software used to create presentations, and SlideShare is a software which enables you to upload word documents to blogger in a presentable, professional way. The aim of using these softwares was to make posts on my blog more interactive and interesting, adding to my blogs creative aspect. As there are countless Prezis and SlideShare presentations already created, covering a vast amount of topics, they also became important in the research stage.

Construction:

A software named Audacity was used to alter the sound of Evylin saying 'get the girl'. Originally this line sounded too high pitched, and more gentle and feminine like. However after playing around with the pitch and tones we managed to create a more sinister, threatening voice, which is consequently more genre appropriate. 

I have created an online portfolio using blogger in order to express my ideas, and present my media coursework in a creative and professional manor. Blogger is online, which is convenient as it can be accessed easily through any source of internet, or mobile device. However, this also means that if the website was to go down, our work would be lost. Additionally further complications would occur if someone weren't to have internet at home, this would seriously reduce it's accessibility. 

Pinnacle Studios is a professional video editing software which we used for editing our production. This was because it was already installed on the computers, and it is the software we are familiar with as it was used to edit our AS production last year. Due to our raw footage being recorded and uploaded in HD, the software slowed down significantly and became a problem. Numerous problems occurred with this software, for example it wouldn’t allow us to slow a clip down. This wasted a large proportion of our time, and caused difficulties. We did look in to another software to use called ‘Adobe Premiere Pro’, however after discussing it we concluded that it would take too much time to buy, install, and then become familiar with the software in order to utilise it.

For our auxiliary tasks, we created a poster and a magazine cover. We mainly used Google images to find model magazine covers and posters to analyse, we also used previously made SlideShares and Prezis to gain a wider understanding of the different conventions, and how they're used.

We used Adobe Photoshop to create both auxiliary tasks. Adobe Photoshop is a multi-layered professional image-editing software, with features such as; color editing, text styles, and effects. It allows the combination of different texts and images, to become one. We became familiarised with this software in very little time, and found it easy to use. It was very effective in creating both a poster, and a magazine cover, in such a professional manor.

Evaluation and Distribution:

Twitter proved to be successful in gaining audience feedback, and promoting our trailer. As such a vast majority of the population have access to twitter, which is free, it makes it a suitable place to promote our trailer. Below is evidence of feedback our trailer received from a person on twitter.



Both YouTube and Vimeo were useful in helping us distribute our trailer as they allowed us to upload it onto their websites where it could be watched publically for free. YouTube has a massive fan base and is used by billions of people all around the world.

As part of evaluating our trailer we constructed a focus group, who we showed the trailer to. We then recorded them watching the trailer so we could video their responses, in order to help us with our audience feedback. We did this using a Sony Handy Cam, the same camera which was used to record out production.  

Conclusion:

Above I have explained and evaluated many different technologies that were used throughout the stages of my A2 coursework. It is quite clear that without these technologies our production would cease to exist, thereby making the different technologies used extremely important in the whole process.